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By Chris Hedges - March 8, 2010

“There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop...And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.”

-- Mario Savio, Berkeley, 1964

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Tuesday, March 16 2010 - Infoshop News

On Tuesday March 2nd [when]...an international graduate student, Kofi Adu-Brempong, was having a "nervous breakdown" in his apartment...[t]he University of Florida Police Department responded not by bringing in mental health workers to stabilize the situation, but by breaking down his door, shooting him twice with a taser, three times with bean-bag shotgun shells, and once in the face with an M-4...Kofi Adu-Brempong is now in the hospital in critical condition, and...is facing criminal charges for possessing a weapon (his cane that he uses to walk due to his polio).

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By DAVE LINDORFF - March 17, 2010

What we have been seeing in Afghanistan--and this goes way back to before the appointment of McChrystal, or even the election of President Barack Obama, and his subsequent escalation of the war--has been a vicious campaign of terror against the Afghan people.

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March 14, 2010

[British Columbia] Premier Gordon Campbell may be disappointed if he is hoping for a Games-based popularity bounce, an extensive poll...suggests..."Basically, they are saying, 'Yeah, I watched the Olympics on TV, and yeah, it was fun, but to my mind, it wasn't worth it,'...They just think of them as a good party, with a big bill."

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By Rafeef Ziadah - Znet

As a Palestinian refugee, the city of Toronto has always been a place of exile to me...However, following the publication of a recent report by [a] prominent Israeli think-tank [which called Toronto a “hub of Israel delegitimization”]...I felt some pride for my adopted city...The report confirmed to those of us involved in the [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions] movement that our work was not in vain.

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America's secret global gulag.

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By Murray Dobbin - 8 March 2010

...[T]here is absolutely no doubt that the system of separation of Arabs and Jews can be compared with the apartheid system in South Africa. Indeed, many experts on how the apartheid system was run claim that Israel's system of hafrada, or separation, is far more brutal and deliberately humiliating than anything devised by the racist regimes of Pretoria.

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The so-called peace process is a charade.

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by Matthew W. Hutchins

Even the most radical conservative can agree with Noam Chomsky on at least one thing. "No one in their right mind wants Iran to develop nuclear weapons." But to Chomsky, nonproliferation requires reciprocal action, rather than international condemnation...His conclusion is that Iran is developing nuclear weapons out of a rational fear for its national safety because of the systematically threatening posture of the United States and Israel.

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By Robert Scheer - March 10, 2010

...[M]embers of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences finally found a movie about the Iraq war they liked because it is “apolitical.” Actually, The Hurt Locker is just the opposite; it’s an endorsement of the politically chauvinistic view that the world is a stage upon which Americans get to deal with their demons no matter the consequence for others.

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By Hélène Buzzetti - Le Devoir

The Bloc Quebecois decided yesterday to withdraw from the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism because it judges it "biased" in favor of Israel and against the Palestinians..."We consider that the Coalition is tainted, partisan and presents a single side of the coin. We desired a much more moderate approach, more consensual, and still with the outlook to find peace."

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Israeli ethnic cleansing to make Jerusalem exclusively Jewish.

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By Boris Kagarlitsky - March 13, 2010

The [Russian] Duma has passed another law that will deliver a big blow to culture, education and public health. The struggle against those sectors has been going on for years, but it appears that this time the deputies are determined to finish them off for good. The law clearly demonstrates the intention of the state to release itself from any remaining social responsibility that it still has toward the people...If the law goes into force, most educational and public health institutions will be removed from the federal budget as of Jan. 1, 2011.

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SchNEWS - Friday 12th March 2010 | Issue 713

After nearly two years of stressful legal wranglings, five Smash EDO activists are facing possible imprisonment for allegedly shaking a crowd barrier at the Carnival Against the Arms Trade in June 2008 in Brighton...Some of them were seriously assaulted by police during the demo, and then suffered multiple arrests, house searches and changes of charges.

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March 12 2010

43 people have been arrested in a demonstration for labour and human rights and the return of collective contracts in the city of Maracay...Amongst the detained are three members of the human rights organisation, Provea, and an editor of the anarchist newspaper El Libertario.

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By Alexander Billet - March 12, 2010

Since Cash's death in 2003, there have been no shortage of forces who have sought to manipulate and reclaim his legacy for themselves...[T]he conservative right have been notably smug in morphing this most rebellious of country legends into one of their own...It's easy to imagine the likes of Glenn Beck squirming at this batch of songs, though...And in their own way, they reveal a stunning answer to any confusion on whose side this artist stood.

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All Israeli settlements are illegal under international law.

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By Michelle Alexander - March 12, 2010

There's an implicit yet undeniable message embedded in [Obama's] appearance on the world stage...If you are poor, marginalized, or relegated to an inferior caste, there is hope for you. Trust us. Trust our rules, laws, customs, and wars. You, too, can get to the promised land...Perhaps greater lies have been told in the past century, but they can be counted on one hand. Racial caste is alive and well in America.

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At Angola, eighty per cent of the prisoners are African-Americans and, under the watchful eye of armed guards on horseback, they still work fields of sugar cane, cotton and corn, for up to 16 hours a day. "You've got to keep the inmates working all day so they're tired at night," says Warden Burl Cain, a committed evangelist who believes that the rehabilitation of convicts is only possible through Christian redemption.

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By DRU OJA JAY - March 11, 2010

On February 13th, Greenpeace International announced that [it] was hiring ForestEthics founder Tzeporah Berman as director of its global climate and energy campaign. The move has provoked intense outrage among many Greenpeace supporters, staff and activists. The conflict raging within Greenpeace has the potential to be an important first step in addressing two heretofore taboo subjects in the environmental movement: the corrupting influence of corporate cash and the absence of democratic structures.

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By Joe Emersberger - March 11, 2010

History shows that the most dangerous people in Haiti are not the poor, but...Haitian businessmen who financed coups in 1991 and 2004 and who urge the UN and the police to be even more brutal; the UN troops and Haitian police who have terrorized places like Bel Air and Cite Soleil; and Canadian officials always ready with money, excuses and lies in support of criminal polices.

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By Dawn Paley - March 10, 2010

"In the face of these serious, ongoing abuses it is unacceptable that Ottawa would even be talking to the Colombian government, let alone fast-tracking an agreement."

-- Paul Moist, President, Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE)

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By Dave Zirin - March 10, 2010

There are the dispossessions as thousands have been forced from their homes into makeshift shantytowns, to both make way for stadiums and make sure that tourists don't have to see any depressing scenes of poverty. The United Nations even issued a complaint on behalf of the 20,000 people removed from the Joe Slovo settlement in Cape Town, called an "eyesore" by World Cup organizers.

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By Carlito Pablo - March 8, 2010

The activist group No One Is Illegal-Vancouver is preparing to confront what it says is a neo-Nazi rally being planned for March 21, the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination...“It seems like the voices that may have been quieter before are now feeling like...they can come out and really publicly say things that we would consider completely atrocious and despicable...”

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By Arun Gupta - March 03, 2010

Official denials aside, the United States has embarked on a new military occupation of Haiti thinly cloaked as disaster relief. But what is the purpose of an occupation, the fourth in the past 100 years? The official response, from the Pentagon to the United Nations, was that more U.S. and UN troops were needed to provide "security and stability" to bring in aid. Leaving aside what is really meant by security and stability, the rapid military response was actually a major reason why aid was delayed.

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By Gideon Levy - 07/03/2010

There have been societies in the past in whose name frightful injustice has been committed, but at least within some of them, genuine, angry and determined left-wing protest took place - of the sort that requires personal risk and courage, and which is not limited to action within the cozy consensus. An occupying society whose town square has been empty for years, with the exception of hollow memorial rallies and poorly attended protests, cannot wash its hands of the situation.

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By Dawn Paley - March 7, 2010

Beyond rhetoric about improving competitiveness and establishing the province as a centre for innovation, among the most concrete strategies suggested in the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources...Service Plan are government sponsored marketing campaigns to promote the benefits of the extractive industries.

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By Bill Tieleman - 9 March 2010

The poor and the disabled are definitely at the top of the B.C. Liberal government's list -- the hit list for more suffering, that is...Last week -- with tens of thousands of British Columbians having lost their jobs and thousands more dependent on meagre disability benefits to survive -- the government slashed social assistance to save $25 million over two years.

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Water is life, not a commodity.

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by Jason Benetto

A commuter in a diabetic coma, an 89-year-old man and children as young as 12 [are] just some of the targets of British police armed with skin-piercing 50,000-volt Taser guns.

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An important Tribunal highlighting Israel's violations of international law.

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By Paul Street - December 2009

The profit system's smarter defenders grasp the need to demonstrate openness to the worries and anger of the populace...To keep the business order intact...Obama needed to occasionally rebuke (and perhaps even mildly half-"regulate") the nation's financial overlords.

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By CBC News - March 5, 2010

Federal government documents on Afghan detainees suggest that Canadian officials intended some prisoners to be tortured in order to gather intelligence, according to a legal expert..."[W]hat [the documents] will show is that Canada partnered deliberately with the torturers in Afghanistan for the interrogation of detainees..."

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By MICHAEL DONNELLY - January 15-17, 2010

The top-down nature and utter lack of grounding in a wide-spread, active-participation, place-based citizenry is precisely what's wrong with environmentalism today and why we keep losing...[T]he professionals undermine, drive out or co-opt any such assemblage that arises...usually taking credit for any gains the citizens have achieved. To the non-profit pros, the function of any "membership" consists of writing donation checks, swallowing/parroting false victory claims, signing Petitions and voting lock-step for Lesser Evil Democrats.

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By Alex Hemingway - March 5, 2010

As British Columbia begins to contemplate the effects of a $6-billion Olympic spending spree, 14 schools have been slated to close this year in the Prince George School District, situated in the Central Interior of the province...The blow comes at a time when local communities are already reeling from 15 school closures since 2002. Residents of BC's Central Interior continue to grapple with serious economic problems, including an unemployment rate of nearly 13 per cent in the city of Prince George.

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SchNEWS - Friday 5th March 2010 | Issue 712

If you’re going to San Francisco be sure not to wear flowers in your hair. Haight Ashbury may have been the place to tune in and freak out...in ‘67, but long-haired free-spirited drifters no longer need apply...The Man is bringing down some bad karma as the squares from the ‘Haight Ashbury Improvement Association’ have gotten off on a real paranoid trip and are hassling for...CCTV cameras...The city mayor is now pushing for a...law to ban all lying or even sitting on pavement.

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By Vancouver Media Co-op - March 5, 2010

The Vancouver Media Co-op has decided to continue, on a trial basis, publishing a fortnightly broadsheet...The March 1-15 issue includes reports and photos from the Tent Village, about ongoing land disputes in the Okanagan, and about recent arrests of anti-Olympics activists in Vancouver.

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By Dawn Paley - March 5, 2010

Activists launched a new website today, claiming Greenpeace International's appointment of Tzeporah Berman as co-director of its climate change campaign will push Greenpeace "beyond the point of no return." The appointment would make her a leader of the organization's global climate strategy.

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March 5, 2010

The Olympics are over but the struggle continues! Vancouver's political community is still being targeted by the police with substantial surveillance and intimidation, unlawful arrests and detentions, unnecessary violence, police provocateurs, and unjust charges requiring legal defence. Nearly 10 people in your community face legal battles and need your support.

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By Am Johal - March 05, 2010

Budget Day in BC hit like a brick yesterday. After all the empty patriotism and uncritical headlines in Vancouver mainstream media that glossed over 8 years of democratic distortion, which approached neo-authoritarianism at times, the sad reality of Olympic opportunity costs are about to hit daylight.

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As a U.S. soldier in 1969, Mike Wong refused orders to Viet Nam and deserted to Canada. Mike is featured in the film Sir! No Sir! In today's wars, Eddie Falcon served as a U.S. Airman in Guantanamo Bay and various places in the Middle East including Iraq and Afghanistan. Mike Wong is a member of Veterans for Peace and Eddie Falcon is a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War.

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By ELLEN BROWN - March 2, 2010

Rather than saving the future for our grandchildren...[“fiscal responsibility”] appears to be a code word for delivering public monies into private hands and raising taxes on the already-squeezed middle class. In the parlance of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), these are called “austerity measures,” and they are the sorts of things that people are taking to the streets in Greece, Iceland and Latvia to protest. Americans are not taking to the streets only because nobody has told us that is what is being planned.

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March 3, 2010

Four people were arrested in Vancouver Tuesday evening upon exiting a Gastown restaurant. Three were released in the early hours of Wednesday and one person held overnight...According to those involved, the three arrested were picked out by police because of prior police intelligence. All four of the arrested have been active during the two week long tent village at 58 W. Hastings.

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March 2 2010

The Greek [Prime Minister], Giorgos Papandreou, has declared the country in "a state of war" after extended meetings with the [European Union] economics commissioner Mr Rehn, leading workers to declare more strikes...[A] dark scenario circulating...is that the "state of war" rhetoric is in fact a prelude to a "state of siege" which will suspend the articles of the constitution protecting striking and protesting.

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By Donald Gutstein - 3 March 2010

Discover Canada is the culmination of a decade of concerted effort by a coalition of big business and conservative ideologues to turn back the clock and make Canada into a more traditional and compliant nation.

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By MATT SIEGRFIRED - March 3, 2010

I was interested to see how the world media would pronounce on the very well developed and tolerated, if legally ambiguous, British Columbia marijuana mores...B.C. is a byword for quality herb and, relatively, chill enforcement with weed joining health care, curling and community theater as signposts of Canada’s more civilized society despite all of the similarities between them and us, the barbarians next door. With a wink and a nod Canada, more or less, let the heads alone during the games with only positive effects all around it would seem.

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By Allen Frances - March 1, 2010

This wholesale medical imperialization of normality could potentially create tens of millions of innocent bystanders who would be mislabeled as having a mental disorder. The pharmaceutical industry would have a field day -- despite the lack of solid evidence of any effective treatments for these newly proposed diagnoses.

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By UDI ALONI and OFER NEIMAN - March 2, 2010

The Israeli establishment, which is used to regard[ing] Israelis as obedient soldiers and Palestinians as quelled subjects, understands that there [is] no greater danger to its regime than the emerging bi-nationalist front. If there is no separation between Jews and Arabs, how can they go on controlling us by creating fear and hatred toward the 'other'?

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“These were not the 'Greenest Games', they were the Freeway Olympics...The [British Columbia] government has been attempting to brand itself as a 'Green Leader' during these games, yet their own studies show that provincial greenhouse gas emission targets are being undermined by their massive freeway expansion scheme...There is nothing green about paving farmland.”

-- Transportation Planner and GatewaySucks.org Organizer Eric Doherty

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March 2, 2010

On Sunday February 28, some 200 protesters took to the streets as part of a 'Games Over! Resistance Lives' rally on the day of the closing ceremonies for the 2010 Winter Olympics. Gathering in the downtown area just blocks from BC Place, the protesters were initially blocked by lines of Vancouver police from moving down some streets.

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By Shourideh cherie Molavi - March 02, 2010

Ontario [politicians] are not interested in a political discussion. Realizing that public dissent and discourse in the face of continued infringements of human dignity and blatant violations of international law cannot be muted easily, the argument is now that there is no issue with debating the Israel-Palestine conflict, instead, “the problem is the name Israeli Apartheid Week.” The concern lies with the mere use of the word apartheid to describe the Israeli system of occupation, expulsion, exclusion and exploitation.

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By Paul Street - February 26, 2010

The dodgy, authoritarian, and messianic-militarist American right has long had a better understanding than the U.S. “left” of the need to stay focused and energized on a daily basis beneath and beyond elections. It walks forcefully with its potent noise machine into the activism and anger void created by progressive de-mobilization, depression, and corporate-Democratic captivity. Popular resentment abhors a vacuum and the hard right is more than happy to fill the empty space.

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SchNEWS - Friday 26th February 2010 | Issue 711

Greece has once again been rocked by protests, strikes and civil unrest. This time in response to a series of swinging government cutbacks aimed at bringing the country into line with neo-liberal dogma and reducing its budget deficit. In response to proposed attacks on workers’ rights and pensions, virtually the entire country came out on strike on Wednesday. 30,000 marched through Athens and violently clashed with police.

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By Julianne Hing - February 28, 2010

People of color, especially young Black and Latino men, get shot at and killed by the police at disproportionately high rates...And the white cops who've shot them [are] all typically acquitted...But...what happens when not all of the officers involved are white?

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By Hanna Kawas, Canada Palestine Association - February 27, 2010

I am a Palestinian Christian who survived Israel’s “Original Sin” that uprooted two thirds of the Palestinian people and wiped out over four hundred Palestinian towns and villages...I am also one of the six million refugees who have been waiting for the past sixty-one years to return to their homes, lands and homeland. I am hurt and outraged at the morally bankrupt resolution of your Legislature. It adds insult to injury.

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February 25th, 2010

VANCOUVER - The Olympic Resistance Network (ORN) has declared the success of the Convergence and protests against the 2010 Winter Olympics as a victory both against the Olympic industry and for local struggles for social and environmental justice. In spite of the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) attempts to cover up the human rights and environmental violations of the corporate sponsors and host governments, the mobilization of communities across the country has forced the issues of homelessness, colonization, policing, public debt and environmental destruction into the public debate.

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New book chronicles inner workings of Saipan's garment factories from first ever first-hand perspective of a former garment factory worker.

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By Mark Weisbrot - February 26, 2010

Latin America took another historic step forward this week with the creation of a new regional organization of 32 Latin American and Caribbean countries. The United States and Canada were excluded.

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While this will not be a full list by any means, it seems relevant to note that Canadian banks, especially the Bank of Montreal, have a large presence in Haiti. The Montreal-based Gildan Activewear, the largest blank t-shirt manufacturer in the world, has production based out of Haitian sweatshops...Finally, there is the issue of how Canada ‘aids’ Haiti. For starters, Canada has mostly provided tied aid – a full 66% of Canadian aid must be spent in Canada...[I]t seems that it is in Canada’s [economic] interest to keep Haiti poor.

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Saturday, February 20 2010 - Infoshop News

As part of the No 2010 Olympics Convergence, members of Katzie First Nation and supporters took part in blocking the Golden Ears Bridge spanning the Fraser River between Pitt Meadows and Langley ["British Columbia"] - Coast Salish Territories.

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By Sean O'Grady - 24 February 2010

A wave of industrial and social unrest is building across Europe as workers resist attempts by governments and private companies to impose austerity policies, drive down wages and rescue some nations from near-bankruptcy...Europe's industrial economy is not clear of recession yet either and with unemployment rising and demands for austerity growing, Europe's workers are becoming increasingly restive.

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By Dave Zirin - February 25, 2010

This range of ugliness—from the catty to the racist to the fatal—is significant because it exposes the reality of what the Winter Olympics are all about. The International Olympic Committee—that sewing circle of monarchists, extortionists, and absolved fascists—likes to hide behind the pretense of nobility. It claims to care not for profit or personal gain.

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By David Rovics - Znet

In the context of most modern, relatively well-off countries, it seems quite evident that rioting – even if it's not much of a riot – only impedes anyone's efforts at building a movement. It is, in fact, a much-used strategy of the police...I have no doubt that the first rock...is thrown by an undercover cop at least half the time in most situations. I also have no doubt that most of the young people participating in Black Bloc...are well-meaning people doing a lot of good work in their communities when they're not throwing rocks through windows. But...when they start throwing rocks during a march they are doing exactly the same work as the police provocateurs...

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By Dave Zirin - February 22, 2010

The IOC and the International Luge Federation (FIL) should right now be begging for forgiveness, demanding a thorough investigation, and already starting to make restitution to Kumaritashvili's family. They should count themselves as lucky that they won't be nabbed for involuntary manslaughter. Instead, they have chosen a path of ugly arrogance...Even for people who oversee winter sports, this is very cold-blooded.

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By Gareth Porter - Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Senior military officials decided to launch the current U.S.-British military campaign to seize Marja in large part to influence domestic U.S. opinion on the war in Afghanistan..."This is all a war of perceptions...This is not a physical war in terms of how many people you kill or how much ground you capture, how many bridges you blow up. This is all in the minds of the participants."

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La firma de acuerdos en áreas como la creación de un organismo regional de América Latina y el Caribe sin Estados Unidos ni Canadá, la reconstrucción de Haití y la declaración conjunta para rechazar las actividades británicas petroleras en las Islas Malvinas, forman parte de las actividades que los presidentes del Caribe y Latinoamérica llevarán a cabo en Cumbre de Río, que inicia este.

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by Jerome Starkey in Kabul and Philippe Naughton

Nato forces in southern Afghanistan bombed a civilian convoy, killing 27 people including women and children and injuring many more...The airstrike in a remote part of Oruzgan province...capped a bloody week for Afghan civilians that has seen some 60 innocent people killed by Nato weapons.

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By Jesse Rosenfeld

In a uniquely Canadian polite and subtle way, the country’s Conservative government has made a clear statement in support of Israel’s continued siege on Gaza and entrenched Palestinian division. Slashing its funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) while transferring that support to the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) judicial sector – specifically towards training prosecutors, judges and police – Canada is using aid to make its political intentions clear.

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By Robert Fisk - February 16, 2010

They are the real resistance. They are the lung through which Gaza breathes...The tunnelers of Gaza are bombed by the Israelis, they die in their own collapsing tunnels – and now they face a new Egyptian wall, even the fear of drowning. Terrorists they may be to the Israelis...but heroes they are to the Palestinians of Gaza.

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By Maya Rolbin-Ghanie - February 12, 2010

The problem of missing and murdered Indigenous women is systemic, and an extension of ongoing racist and sexist colonial policies such as the Indian Act. The issue is also [Canada]-wide, with the frequency of violence against Indigenous women growing in eastern provinces. [British Columbia]...[is] the site of the most alarming level of gendered and racialized violence toward Native women in the country.

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Guest, Pierre Labossiere, a Haitian national, co-founder of the Haiti Action Committee, has been a long-time social-justice activist and advocate for the Lavalas Party of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, currently exiled in South Africa. Pierre has also been active in the campaigns to free political prisoners in Haiti and the U.S. Guest, Emiliano Echeverria, Central American Scholar, radio DJ, and former Coordinator of "Freedom Is A Constant Struggle" on KPFA Pacifica Radio. Emiliano is also a long-time activist who has traveled often to Cuba where he received excellent medical care and appeared in the film Sicko.

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February 21, 2010

"We are here to join the Convergence and offer solidarity to the Indigenous people of Turtle Island," said a man dressed in black wearing sunglasses and a black balaclava covering his face from the nose down. He was the only person among his group of about six, similarly-clad, who was willing to talk to media. He said he would not identify himself.

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17 February 2010

The six Serbian anarcho-syndicalists who were charged with 'International Terrorism' have been acquitted today...All six were charged [with] 'International Terrorism', maximum penalty 15 years imprisonment, for an action at Belgrade's Greek embassy which caused 18 Euros [damage]. The Belgrade Six have been imprisoned since their arrest in September 2009.

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Does Washington plan a mass culling of Haitians?

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Guest, Bob Offer-Westort, Coordinating Editor of the Street Sheet, San Francisco homeless people's newspaper, and the Civil Rights Organizer for the Coalition on Homelessness. Guest, Tiny (daughter of dee, single mama of tiburcio) is a poverty scholar, co-editor and founder of POOR Magazine/PoorNewsNetwork, member of the Poetas POBRE- Po' Poets Project and the welfareQUEENs, and author of Criminal of Poverty: Growing up Homeless in America.

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By Anonymous - February 18, 2010

Corporate media sensationalism and control is no small factor in our daily lives. When we fall into a political argument at work, on the Skytrain, passing a blunt around, or even at the dinner table we are usually bombarded with word-for-word repetitions of the same lines given to us on the news.

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By Tyler Shipley - February 21, 2010

I would like to believe that we do not need to abandon the games that we love in order to critique the way those same games are exploited for the purposes of the [Olympic] Games. I'm not prepared to blame the activities that I love for the fact that they are being used to promote a corporate, militaristic and colonial agenda.

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By Vancouver Media Co-op - February 15, 2010

The daily newspaper of the 2010 Anti-Olympic Convergence, a project of the Vancouver Media Co-op.

Download a pdf of the Balaclava! Broadsheet HERE!.

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February 19, 2010 - Media Co-op Blog

The Heart Attack action broke a few windows, but the cost is negligible compared to the violence done by the targeted corporations. As long as these corporations invest in polluting industries, co-opting indigenous culture, and abusing human rights, people will continue to retaliate.

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By Linda Solomon - Feb. 19th, 2010

"You're a traitor," someone in the group of sixty activists shouted out, after lobbing a pie at David Eby...British Columbia Civil Liberties executive director Eby was on the panel Wednesday night at a meeting for anti-Olympics activists...There were about sixty people in the room, and many expressed support for the actions of Black Bloc-affiliated protesters on Saturday...

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While much of the country was ecstatic over hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, many people were shocked to discover that the Torch Relay and the Games were the targets of country-wide protests. This is a story I have been following for the past two years, watching as the movement grew and the date of the Olympics approached. The reaction to a sector of Canadian society expressing their right to dissent has indeed been mixed, but largely the protestors have been condemned.

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Guest, LBD (William Hammons) is a DJ and co-host of KPOO's Saturday morning show (7 a.m. - Noon), Wake Up Everybody! with Donald E. Lacy, as well as co-founder with Lacy of the Love Life Foundation. The program is a mix of music, news and public affairs, liberally sprinkled with comedy. KPOO is a community-based nonprofit, noncommercial radio station that caters to the needs of populations traditionally underrepresented in the mainstream media.

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By Andrew Crosby - February 18, 2010

The conflation of protests and terrorism has steadily increased since the 1999 “Battle of Seattle” and the 9/11 attacks which even further entrenched the notion that militarized strategies were essential in quelling dissent...“In the past few years we are seeing an increase, not of the police being militarized, but of police working with the military. It goes beyond militarization...”

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By ADAM TURL - February 19-21, 2010

Today the largest employer in the U.S. (and the world) is the anti-union behemoth Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart's 1.4 million U.S. "associates" often earn poverty or near poverty wages...It was during the economic crises of the 1970s and the right-wing "Reagan Revolution" of the 1980s that Wal-Mart first blossomed into a retail giant. As recession and free-market policies rolled back [previous working class] gains...Wal-Mart thrived [and]...reproduced the conditions of its origin as it spread outward from Arkansas through the South and Midwest.

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By Kim Petersen - February 16, 2010

Vancouver is situated in the traditional territories of Coast Salish First Nations...The same unceded status holds for Whistler...The Olympic Games is "an energy grab, it's a land grab, and it disrespects inherent Aboriginal rights and title to the land and water"...

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By Ali Abunimah - February 18, 2010

An extraordinary series of articles, reports and presentations by Israel's influential Reut Institute has identified the global movement for justice, equality and peace as an "existential threat" to Israel and called on the Israeli government to direct substantial resources to "attack" and possibly engage in criminal "sabotage" of this movement in what Reut believes are its various international "hubs" in London, Madrid, Toronto, the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond.

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Palestinians can be held indefinitely.

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February 13, 2010

On the final day of the 2010 Winter Olympic Torch Relay, the torch was blocked twice in East Vancouver. The first blockade occurred...when some 100 protesters successfully blocked the torch at Victory Square...Shortly after, scores of protesters on Commercial Drive were able to blockade the torch and forced it to reroute along Clark Street. Protesters strung twine and barbed wire across Commercial Drive, then moved to intercept the torch after it had been rerouted.

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I met Safiya in the visiting room of the Federal Correctional Institution (for women) in Dublin, California, in 1997—but when we embraced, it felt as if I’d known her all my life. At the time, Safiya was traveling to various prisons, visiting political prisoners to talk with us about Jericho ’98, the national campaign, beginning with a march rally to the White House, that she was organizing (with Herman and Iyaluua Ferguson, political prisoner Jalil Muntaqim, and others). I was in Dublin, along with six other women political prisoners.

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By Vancouver Media Co-op - February 17, 2010

Since the initiation of the tent city at 58 W. Hastings street in Vancouver, community activists and legal observers have noted the presence of undercover police officers at the site. This afternoon, two officers were outed and removed from the site by residents.

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Day 2 at the Olympic Tent Village went strongly and smoothly, thanks to the community effort to support and defend it. Hundreds gathered during the evening and through the night. During the day, there were a few minor police altercations, including the identification of two undercover police officers and another incident when the [Vancouver Police Department] attempted to barge into the Tent Village.

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February 16, 2010 - Media Co-op Blog

As a BCCLA member and a friend and ally of the anti-Olympic protesters, I was extremely disappointed to hear about David Eby’s comments to the media regarding Saturday’s protest...Eby...said he was “sickened” by images of Black Bloc members smashing windows and tossing newspaper boxes into the streets...[I]t’s not the job of either Eby or the BCCLA to decide which protesters are “good” and which are “bad” — it’s their job to ensure that the civil liberties of all protesters, peaceful or not, are protected.

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By Dave Zirin - February 14, 2010

Nuance is the mortal enemy of essayist Christopher Hitchens. Whether it’s his rapturous support for Bush’s Iraq invasion or his best-selling dismissal...of religion, Hitchens will always eschew a surgical analysis for the rhetorical amputation. Beneath the Oxford education, he has become Thomas Friedman in an ascot, with all the subtlety of a blowtorch.

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February 16, 2010

A violent protest that saw seven people arrested and windows smashed at downtown Vancouver businesses was a success, according to a group of journalists from California covering resistance against the 2010 Olympic Winter Games.

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One of the CIA's many lawless, destructive programs.

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On February 12th and 13th, 2010, thousands of courageous individuals came together to resist the 2010 Olympic police state and to attack the corporations plundering the land and deepening poverty. We write this communique as participants in and organizers of the black bloc presence at these demonstrations, known as “Take Back Our City” and “2010 Heart Attack.”

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Fifth edition of the daily newspaper of the 2010 Anti-Olympic Convergence.

Download a pdf of Balaclava! #5 HERE!.

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By Scott Harris - February 14, 2010

The major mobilization on Saturday, dubbed the "2010 Heart Attack" began in the early hours of the morning, with around 300 activists gathering at Thornton Park under a heavy police presence to march through the streets of Vancouver in an attempt to disrupt "business as usual" on the opening day of competition of the 2010 Games.

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By Moira Peters - February 13, 2010

"I'm glad you brought up the criminal element. The IOC and VANOC is the criminal element, pillaging public coffers, the effects of which we will see long after the Games," with cuts to health care, affordable housing, education and meaningful social services..."Gangs like the VPD, the RCMP, CSIS and [Canadian Armed Forces] make up some of the 17,000 thugs in our streets."

-- Gord Hill of the Kwakwaka'wakw First Nation

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Second edition of the daily newspaper of the 2010 Anti-Olympic Convergence.

The Vancouver Media Coop is releasing a broadsheet every day of the Convergence.

Download a pdf of Balaclava! #2 HERE!.

Click here to download a copy of the first issue.

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By Infoshop News - Thursday, February 11 2010

Rochester Indymedia journalist, Dawn Zuppelli, was interrogated and detained for over an hour by the Canadian Border Services Agency...on her way to cover protests at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver...[She] was tagged for further interrogation and funneled off to a check point area...[and] was taken into a separate room with other agents and passengers. The room was outfitted with sterile metal desks, two sided mirrored window rooms, and plenty of customs officers donning bullet proof vests and latex gloves...["]You are here to protest and we know that."

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By Derrick O'Keefe - February 11, 2010

Many of Canada’s athletes were bitterly disappointed [by the boycott of the Moscow Olympic Games] in 1980, but our country’s authorities assured them that the rights of the people of Afghanistan were worth the sacrifice of their athletic ambitions...Thirty years later, it is the United States, Canada, and the other NATO countries that are occupying Afghanistan. Instead of a boycott, the Vancouver 2010 Olympics are being used to promote militarism in general and Canada’s role in the occupation of Afghanistan in particular.

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First edition of the daily newspaper of the 2010 Anti-Olympic Convergence.

The Vancouver Media Coop is releasing a broadsheet every day of the Convergence.

Download a pdf of the Balaclava! Broadsheet HERE!.

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By Anthony Fention - February 10, 2010

The Brand Vancouver that Olympic organizers are trying to sell..."is neoliberalism with a human face, the 21st century 'green' capitalism. Beating the shit out of protesters, and the international media arriving and seeing a whole bunch of homeless people, including a high proportion of Native peoples...it's going to be harder and harder to sell this international brand of Vancouver. The image of the city as a brutal resort town for the rich...is going to come...to the forefront."

-- Charles Demers, Vancouver Radical Activist, Comedian and Novelist

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By Raúl Zibechi - Wednesday, 20 January 2010

The prospect of the FIFA World Cup in 2014 followed by the Olympic Games in 2016 has reignited the debate about public security in a country where there is an undeclared war taking place in the favelas between the military police, paramilitary groups, and drug traffickers, but where the principal victims are the poor.

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Hunger is a growing national emergency.

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My interest in Angola is as both a paradigm of the Southern transformation of plantations into prisons and as a prototype for what we now call the prison industrial complex. Many old plantations in the South became prisons after the Civil War. Angela Y. Davis traces the initial rise of the penitentiary system to the abolition of slavery, writing: “in the immediate aftermath of slavery, the southern states hastened to develop a criminal justice system that could legally restrict the possibilities of freedom for the newly released slaves.”

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Independent media outlet Vancouver Media Cooperative (VMC) announced today the launch of a brand new platform dedicated to covering news related to the city's anti-Olympics resistance movements...During the anti-Olympics convergence, journalists and activists will be covering the action as they see it and posting to 2010.mediacoop.ca.

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February 9, 2010

The protest organizers said it will be up to the police, not them, to ensure protests remain peaceful..."There's never been any violence associated with an anti-Olympic protest -- property damage that you might see in some cases is not violence..."

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By ANANYA MUKHERJEE-REED - February 5-7, 2010

8.5 percent Canadians are currently unemployed. For some time now, ‘employed’ Canadians have been facing a high degree of economic insecurity. Inequality is high and growing...Meanwhile, ordinary Canadians are visiting food banks in record numbers...Some 20 percent of food bank users are employed - but are unable to meet basic needs with their income.

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By TODD GORDON and JEFFREY R. WEBBER - February 5-7, 2010

The new Lobo regime and the golpista press are presenting the transfer of power as a return to democracy and thus an end to the coup. Lobo, they claim, marks a new beginning for a democratic Honduras under a new government of national reconciliation. Unsurprisingly, this position is being echoed by U.S. and Canadian imperialism. These same powers supported the coup, their claims to the contrary nothwithstanding.

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Five years of savage torture has destroyed her humanity.

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By Zoe Blunt - February 8, 2010

...[T]he government is funding 16,000 police, soldiers, and security personnel. The Games will include helicopters overhead, military vessels offshore, large-scale road closures, miles of security fences, and almost 1,000 closed-circuit television cameras...Two key figures in the RCMP's Vancouver 2010 Integrated Security Unit have extensive experience in using force to quell dissent.

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par Federico Fuentes - 2 décembre 2009

Venezuela lance l'appelle pour tenir le 5ieme internationale, pour la construction "d'un socailisme du 21 siecle".

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For Immediate Release – Saturday, February 6, 2010

Martin Macias Jr., an independent media reporter from Chicago traveling to cover the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver BC, has been rejected by Canadian border agents and held without outside contact for at least 7 hours...Macias...was a leading member of No Games Chicago - which successfully opposed Chicago's bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics.

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By Kim Pemberton - February 6, 2010

Aboriginal groups are divided on whether to support the Olympics. 80 of B.C.'s 203 bands refuse to participate because government and Vanoc ignore 'horrific levels of poverty,' their leader says.

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By Ian MacLeod - February 7, 2010

For months now, a loose coalition of anti-Olympic, anti-global, anti-poverty and anti-capitalists have been organizing protests to take place at the Games, always a favourite backdrop for demonstrators. Olympic security is responding with more than 15,000 police, military and private security guards and a total security budget of $900 million.

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By Robert Fisk - February 06, 2010

Forget Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the 15,000 Lebanese and Palestinian dead. Forget the Sabra and Shatila massacre that same year...And forget, of course, the more than 1,300 Palestinians slaughtered by Israel in Gaza last year...Israel...is now under an even more dangerous, near-unprecedented attack...That was the dreary, familiar, hopelessly misunderstood theme at the 10th annual Herzliya conference of diplomats, Israeli civil servants, military gold braid and government yesterday.

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By Am Johal - Thursday, February 04, 2010

Some time after the Olympic opening ceremonies take place, there will be a sea of red tents fanning out around the downtown core. They will be housing homeless people and their supporters as a sign of visible protest at the inaction of government...There are between 10,500 and 15,000 homeless people in [British Columbia]. There are between 200,000 to 300,000 homeless people in Canada.

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Jews as well as Arabs are abused.

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February 4, 2010

Oversized neon Olympic rings illuminate Vancouver harbour while a giant mural of a snowboarder mid-trick welcomes visitors to the airport. In the city centre, a sleek steel-and-glass Olympic clock is counting down to next month's winter games...But for 51-year-old Wayne...looking up at the snowcapped mountains where the downhill competition runs will be fills him with dread.

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By Daniel Tencer; February 3, 2010

If there is any indicator of the toll that the Great Recession has taken on the public, it would be the statistics beginning to emerge about hunger in the US...[T]he number of Americans in need of food aid has jumped 46 percent in three years, including a 50 percent jump in the number of children needing food assistance, and a 64 percent increase in hunger in senior citizens' homes.

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Yet another reason to go vegetarian or vegan.

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By RAMZY BAROUD - February 4, 2010

One thing we all know by now is that Israel is a highly militarized country. Its definition of ‘existence’ can only be ensured by its uncontested military dominance at all fronts, thus the devastating link between Palestine and Lebanon. This link makes any analysis of Israel’s military intents in Gaza, that excludes Lebanon...seriously lacking.

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By DOUG WARD - January 29, 2010

VANCOUVER -- Anarchist punk ruled on the night of Jan. 22 at Victory
Square, in the heart of the Olympic city. More than 200 anti-2010
protesters, some carrying black flags and burning torches, gathered for
what had all the hallmarks of a dress rehearsal for the street protests
that could erupt during the Winter Games just over two weeks away.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

On Thursday February 4, representatives from the Olympic Resistance Network and allied groups will be hosting a press scrum [in Pigeon Park in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver]...“While Olympic corporate sponsors are getting bailed out, Indigenous lands are being stolen, people are becoming homeless, thousands are losing their jobs and access to public services, the environment is being destroyed, and civil liberties are being eroded with almost a billion dollars sunk into surveillance. This negative Olympic legacy is turning into a growing anti-Olympic legacy of resistance across the country.”

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Except for Aristide, Haitian governments have done nothing to address the issue.

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Willie Sundiata Tate (Sundi), was a member of All of Us or None, a group of ex-prisoners actively fighting discrimination against people who have done time in prison, and was a member of TIMERS, another group of former Black Panthers and activist ex-prisoners who organized an annual Black Family Reunion Day in West Oakland with food, speakers and a bicycle give-away for many years.

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By VIJAY PRASHAD - January 27, 2010

The U.S. government, since 1804, has never allowed Haiti to be independent. In the last century, it treated Haiti with contempt. Its army occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934...From 1957 to 1986, the U.S. provided unconditional support for the dictatorship of the Duvaliers, the most brutal regime in the Caribbean.

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By Suzanne Fournier - Tuesday, February 02, 2010

The official launch of the "Downtown Eastside Connect" kiosk Monday was quickly followed by an anti-poverty protest dubbing it a "government spin-doctoring centre"...B.C. Housing Minister Rich Coleman confirmed the pavilion...was created to showcase progress made on housing and other issues of the "challenging" area.

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January 31, 2010

As the Olympic torch relay proceeded up the street, the protesters waved placards and signs that said: “$6 billion could fund social housing, health care and education”, “Why support such waste”, “Our taxes for corporate profits”, “Solidarity with First Nations”, “Olympics – not our priority”, “We want our schools to stay open in PG” and “No more cuts”.

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It is crucial to support the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement...To paraphrase Chicago community organizer Saul Alinsky, the way to beat organized oppression is with organized boycotts against Israeli companies and global corporate giants allied with its government's war machine.

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By JONATHAN COOK - February 2, 2010

Leaders of the Arab minority in Israel warned this week that they were facing an unprecedented campaign of persecution, backed by the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu, designed to stop their political activities.

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Pierre Labossiere, a Haitian national, co-founder of the Haiti Action Committee, has been a long-time social-justice activist and supporter of the Lavalas Party of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, currently exiled in South Africa.

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He'll be sorely missed.

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by Mark Iype

Political protests take countless forms...The hunger strike and the wildcat strike. The protest march and the protest song. The sit-in and the petition. They all have their place in history for combating the powerful.

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January 31, 2010

No2010.com has experienced some technical difficulties, but we are once again online...

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By Stuart Munckton - 28 January 2010

Mass protests by Tamils occurred [January 28] at the Christmas Island Immigration Detention Centre, over delays in processing Tamil refugees and granting visas. With placards reading “How long do we have to wait?” and “Protection not detention”, the protest coincided with a visit to the island by...[an] immigration spokesperson...

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I am hitting a lot of strange road blocks as I try, as an historian, to document the history of American asylums. The congregate forces that want such histories hidden seem to be more powerful than the united groups that want to bring such institutions' histories out into public transparency and open-access records. The main reason I feel these asylums and institutions in American history need to be fully documented is for the ex-"patients" who actually spent parts of their lives in these holdovers from the Dark Ages. This is not ancient history.

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By Ish Theilheimer - January 14, 2010

Leading economists predict massive cuts to political targets with Canada's next federal budget...The Conservatives will utilize any pressure on them to cut Canada's $50 billion deficit by axing programs they don't like or that threaten their ideology...The Conservatives' constituency "will want to see blood on the streets," and the government will willingly oblige in keeping with its unspoken but ongoing efforts to "defund the left" .

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By Scott Horton - 21 January 2010

...[N]ew evidence now emerging may entangle Obama’s young administration with crimes that occurred during the George W. Bush presidency, evidence that suggests the current administration failed to investigate seriously...a cover-up of the possible homicides of three prisoners at Guantánamo in 2006.

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Obama's policies, not rhetoric, signal his ongoing agenda.

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By Gideon Levy - 28/01/2010

The Holocaust must not be forgotten, and there is no need to compare it with anything. Israel must take part in the efforts to keep its memory alive, but in doing so it must show up with clean hands, clean of evil of their own doing. And it must not arouse suspicion that it is cynically using the memory of the Holocaust to obliterate and blur other things. Regrettably, this is not the case.

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Tuesday, January 26, 2010 - CBC News

A protest pie thrown at the federal fisheries minister should make Ottawa look into whether an animal-rights group should be labelled "terrorist," says an MP from Newfoundland and Labrador..."There has to be a review whether or not PETA has crossed the line now by attacking a federal minister of the Crown for the purpose of public intimidation of an office-holder" [said] Byrne.

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January 28, 2010 - Znet

Howard Zinn, the Boston University historian and political activist who was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam...died of a heart attack today in Santa Monica, California, where he was traveling..."His writings have changed the consciousness of a generation, and helped open new paths to understanding and its crucial meaning for our lives," Noam Chomsky...once wrote of Dr. Zinn.

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Students at Carleton University in Ottawa have launched a campaign asking the university to divest from five corporations benefiting from the Israeli occupation, and to establish a socially responsible investment policy.

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By Chris Hedges - Jan. 24, 2010

We find our collective identity in...national myths...But the America we celebrate is an illusion. It does not exist. Our government and judiciary have no real sovereignty. Our press provides diversion, not information. Our organs of security and power keep us as domesticated and as fearful as most Iraqis...[A] revolutionary force, best described as inverted totalitarianism, is plunging us into a state of neo-feudalism, perpetual war and severe repression.

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By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS - January 27, 2010

...Democrats are as dependent as Republicans on corporate interest groups for campaign funding...The Democrats have to support war and the police state if they want funding from the military/security complex. They have to make the health care bill into a subsidy for private insurance if they want funding from the insurance companies. They have to abandon the American people for the rich banksters if they want funding from the financial lobby.

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By Cyril Mychalejko - January 26, 2010

Rape. Murder. Corruption. Environmental contamination. Impunity. These are just some of the charges and incidents that have plagued Canadian mining operations abroad for years..."One is left to wonder how many more deaths it will take to convince the Canadian Parliament - and people - that something needs to be urgently done to reign in their corporations and prevent all these tragedies."

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In a dangerous decision and a break with its own precedent, the U.S. Supreme Court, on Jan. 15, opened the door wide to Pennsylvania prosecutors’ efforts to execute the innocent political prisoner, murder frame-up victim, award-winning journalist, and world-renowned “Voice of the Voiceless,” Mumia Abu-Jamal.

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Israel is exploiting Haiti's catastrophe for profit.

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By David Swanson - January 19, 2010

Members of the U.S. Foreign service told President Aristide that if he remained in Port-au-Prince, the United States would not provide any assistance when the expected attack by the insurgents occurred, and that they expected that the insurgents would kill him, his wife and many of his supporters.

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This is the third part of an interview conducted with Robert King and Terry Kupers in October 2009. In part 3, Robert King and Dr. Terry Kupers argue that slavery persists today in Angola and other U.S. prisons, citing the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which legalizes slavery in prisons as "a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." As King says: "You can be legally incarcerated but morally innocent."

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By Dave Zirin - Monday, January 25, 2010

The people of [Vancouver] are developing a different outlet for their Olympic angst. For the first time in the history of the games, a full-scale protest is being planned to welcome the athletes, tourists, and foreign dignitaries...One thing is certain: if you are in Vancouver, and competitive curling doesn't get your blood pumping, there will be quite the spectacle outside the arena.

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By Justin Podur - January 25, 2010

Before too long, as the security and looting stories rise in prominence, opinion pieces will appear about the ingratitude of Haitians. As donations level off, analyses will discuss compassion fatigue. These would be better informed by being a little less oblivious to the limits of governmental compassion for Haiti.

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From February 10th-15th the VMC (Vancouver Media Co-op) will be cranking out daily reports from the streets of resistance...If you are a video ninja, photo bug, radio geek, crack writer or are fast on your feet, we need your help to cover the days of resistance during the Vancouver Olympics.

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By Dale Mills - 23 January 2010

The December United Nations Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen ended without achieving any binding agreement to cut carbon emissions. Extreme actions were taken by Denmark to ensure that protests were stifled and voices not heard.

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By Bahija Reghai - January 23, 2010

Our country is being used as a fly-trap by a propaganda network that churns out and cross-feeds reports and articles for use by those who lobby hard for Israel. Their reach is wide and deep within our political body, be they religious groups such as Charles McVety and his Canada Christian College extremists, or secular groups and individuals...

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By Marjorie Griffin Cohen and Iglika Ivanova - January 20, 2010

It's a little-known fact, but "the best place on Earth" is now home of the lowest minimum wages in Canada. [British Columbia's] minimum wage has been frozen at $8 per hour (and an embarrassingly low $6 for the first 500 hours of work) since 2001, and there is little indication that this is about to change any time soon...Working poverty is a serious problem in our province and 56 per cent of poor children in B.C. live in families where at least one parent works full-year, full-time.

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By Scott Shane and Eric Schmitt - Saturday, January 23, 2010

Since the suicide bombing that took the lives of seven Americans in Afghanistan on Dec. 30, the Central Intelligence Agency has struck back against militants in Pakistan with the most intensive series of missile strikes from drone aircraft since the covert program began.

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By BOB MACKIN - January 20, 2010

Why are so many Vancouverites skeptical about the 2010 Winter Olympics or even opposed to the Games? Washington, D.C. author and journalist Dave Zirin has the answer...“When the regular citizen finds they can’t take public transportation or their rents have been jacked-up through the roof or the police are on the corner telling them to hustle along -- and all of this is because of an international sporting event -- that’s a recipe for conflict...”

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January 23, 2010 - Znet

On Tuesday, Jan. 19, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal...Basically, the Supreme Court went against the lower federal circuit court's 2001 and 2008 rulings...Now the case goes back down to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, who will decide whether they will re-impose the death penalty without the jury trial.

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22 January 2010

If reconstruction proceeds under the supervision of foreign troops and international development agencies it will not serve the interests of the vast majority of Haiti's population...Neoliberal forms of international "aid" have already directly contributed to the systematic impoverishment of Haiti's people and the undermining of their government...

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By Bristol No Borders - 4 January 2010

...A report published by..a Euro-African network of 40 organisations...working on issues of immigration policy...paints a vivid picture of the effects of the EU's migration policies by focusing on three regions in which a number of common denominators are identified in spite of the significant difference between them...The themes that run through all the sections from specific areas are those of controls and attempts to stop migrants, their detention in awful conditions...and a de-humanisation that goes so far as to result in deaths...

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By Adrian Nieoczym - Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

The police took a special interest in an anti-Olympics speaking tour’s Kelowna stop last night. And while the cops say they are just doing what’s necessary to keep the Olympics safe, critics contend their actions are intimidating and an attack on the right to dissent.

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The most effective way to stop Israeli crimes against humanity.

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By Witness Against Torture (WAT) - January 22, 2010

In a dramatic protest, 42 activists with Witness Against Torture were arrested this afternoon at the U.S. Capitol. The protest comes on the eve of the since-voided deadline President Obama had set for closing the prison camp at Guantanamo...Inside the Capitol, 14 activists performed a "memorial service" for the three men whose deaths at Guantanamo in 2006 were initially reported as suicides and callously described as "acts of asymmetrical warfare" by military officials.

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By Ron Jacobs - January 21, 2010

The US involvement in Afghanistan that began under [former US President] Jimmy Carter was not an accident. It was the result of a concerted effort by the US Right to regain its power in the wake of the US defeat in Vietnam...[W]hat it meant for Afghanistan was that Washington "was (now) backing a class of mullahs and landowners that had been fighting any social reform for generations"...The mujahedin war and what followed destroyed the social progress made under previous Afghan governments.

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There are many different ways that the corporate media continues to misrepresent the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela. Many critics of this biased media coverage have directly challenged the demonization of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, but very few critics, if any, have exposed the media’s virtual erasure of the vibrant and growing participatory democracy in Venezuela (also featuring a video interview with co-author Carlos Martinez).

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By Mel Frykberg - Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Israel is lashing out at international criticism and attempting to crush local dissent in what appears to be growing sensitivity to reproach of its policies...Several recent incidents have dominated media headlines, including the arrest of a Jewish-American journalist on the grounds of security, threats by an Israeli minister against international diplomats and the arrest of Israeli and Palestinian peace activists.

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By Carmen Teeple Hopkins - January 18, 2010

The 2010 Vancouver Olympics offers another possibility for international shame that Indigenous women are capitalizing on through political organizing...There is certainly credence and a history of resistance by Indigenous women that gives weight to the utilization of the world’s gaze on Canada that Vancouver will see within the months to come.

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By PATRICK COCKBURN - January 15-17, 2010

So much of the criticism of [previous US] President Bush has focused on his wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that his equally culpable actions in Haiti never attracted condemnation. But if the country is a failed state today, partly run by the UN, in so far as it is run by anybody, then American actions over the years have a lot to do with it.

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By Mark Weisbrot - January 16, 2010

...Latvia is an extreme case, partly because the macro-economic policy is so far to the right, and 19th-century-brutal. The World Bank has complained about the pension cuts that disproportionately hurt the poor, and the long-term damage to the educational system from mandated budget cuts in that area.

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By The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal - January 19, 2010

Mumia Abu-Jamal...now faces an immediate new threat to his life from the US Supreme Court. The Court ruled last year on Mumia's appeal, by summarily refusing to even consider a reversal of his unjust 1982 murder conviction in a blatantly racist court. And last week, the Supreme Court discussed a cross-appeal by the State of Pennsylvania to reinstate Mumia's death sentence...A ruling could be announced as early as Tuesday this week.

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Whale sounds and Maori chants were blasted through loudspeakers as a rallying cry for the almost 1000 whales doomed to be illegally slaughtered by Japanese poachers in the Antarctic Whale Sanctuary, as sanctioned by the Japanese government.

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Ignored by most commentators is the truth of Haiti’s historic and ongoing poverty – in classic “blame the victim” coverage. E.g., it’s not mentioned that Haitians won their war of independence against Napoleon’s crack troops in 1804, and were celebrating their bicentennial when the U.S. kidnapped and exiled (for the second time) their popular President Jean-Bertrand Aristide who won two landslide victories in internationally monitored elections.

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January 17, 2010

The U.S. government is advising American sports fans travelling to Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Olympics to watch out for al-Qaeda and other extremists, especially on transit and in restaurants, churches and other areas outside official venues.

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By Dawn Paley - January 15, 2010

Dozens of people protested the official Olympics ceremony in downtown Edmonton this evening, an island of resistance in a sea of people out to see the big show...Activsts chanted slogans including "Homes not Games," and "No Olympics on Stolen Native Land."

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By Dan Freeman-Maloy - January 16, 2010

Over the course of the past decade, Canada's leading officials and most prestigious commentators have learned how to approach Haiti in the spirit of cynical power politics and racist condescension...while maintaining a posture of national self-flattery. With attention again riveted on Haiti following the horrific tragedy inflicted by Tuesday's earthquake...established patterns of "help" for Haiti need to be overcome if the destructive impact of this catastrophe is to be somehow limited.

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By Charlie Smith - January 7, 2010

“I was...completely shocked...He more or less threw my upper body back up, swung me around, threw me in handcuffs, and then told me to get down on my knees with my face on the ground. The whole time, I didn’t resist at all.”

--Simon Fraser University Graduate Student Clayton Wilson

“They [police] do things in such a violent and ferocious manner that who knows what registers in people’s heads?...They shock everybody, and it’s unnecessary.”

--Vancouver Lawyer Phil Rankin

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Pat Robertson indicates that Haiti has been cursed ever since the Haitians signed a pact with the devil for their independence. He is alluding to the ceremony of the Bois Caiman that was held in Haiti during the night of August 14th, 1791 under the guidance of the Jamaican-born Voodoo Priest Dutty Bookman.

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by Ted Rall - Thursday, January 14, 2010

An earthquake isn't just an earthquake. The same 7.0 tremor hitting San Francisco wouldn't kill nearly as many people as in Port-au-Prince...Earthquakes are random events. How many people they kill is predetermined. In Haiti this week, don't blame tectonic plates. Ninety-nine percent of the death toll is attributable to poverty.

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Freedom is a Constant Struggle TV show: Our guests are Michael Wong and Jeff Patterson, two war resisters. Jeff Paterson, a US Marine, was the first GI to refuse orders to his war - Gulf War 1. Mike Wong was born and raised in San Francisco, and became a soldier during the Vietnam War.

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By Roger Annis - January 14, 2010

On February 12, the corporate sporting behemoth known as the 21st Winter Olympic Games will open to great fanfare in Vancouver. In a time of economic hardship and government cuts to social programs across Canada...[b]illions of dollars have been spent constructing venues, a new convention center and airport terminal; widening and paving untold kilometers of roads and highways; building a hugely expensive rapid transit line...and erecting new hotels to serve the influx of corporate sponsors and spectators.

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By James Petras - January 3rd, 2010

The decades-long wars and occupations of Moslem countries have diverted hundreds of billions of dollars of public funds to a militarist policy with no benefit to the US, while China modernizes its civilian economy...While the White House and Congress subsidize and pander to the militarist-colonial state of Israel with its insignificant resource base and market...China’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew 10 fold over the past 26 years.

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By DANIEL DRENNAN - January 13, 2010

From an America that doesn't deserve him, Emory Douglas is coming to Beirut. For fifty dollars, one can enter an Art Center's hallowed halls and benefit from a workshop with the artist...Meanwhile, in a Lebanon that deserves him less, the Voices most in need of him remain outside, ever marginalized; waiting to be lifted, their song never heard.

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January 14, 2010

About 30 protesters, part of a national movement demonstrating against the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, took their grievances to Saskatoon's Olympic torch relay event Monday.

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By Andrew Nikiforuk - 13 January 2010

The police drama now unfolding in the rich natural gas fields of British Columbia has as much to say about the provocative nature of Wiebo Ludwig as it does about the corrupt state of the nation's extreme resource development. It also offers a perverse Canadian window into the state's overwrought preoccupation with terrorism, where underwear bombers and pipeline saboteurs seemingly erase civility faster than a Paris Hilton video.

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Civil liberty erosion in Israel.

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Mexico has been carried in this way to the status of a leading “emerging market.” Under the guidance of international financial supervision, and with the help of a safe and supervised U.S. Treasury debt policy, the country has become a favorite object of speculative foreign money capital. It stands or falls in this respect with the trend of confidence that the foreign monetary investors give or take away from the country...

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By Andrea Woo - January 9, 2010

Homeless people in Whistler are being forced to relocate to Squamish as the Olympics draw near, according to a Whistler outreach worker...Peter Harker, who works for Sea to Sky Community Services, said Olympic organizers are taking over roads and parking lots, leaving many visible homeless people with no choice but to go to Squamish.

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by Daniel Rowinski

Simon Glik, a lawyer, was walking down Tremont Street in Boston when he saw three police officers struggling to extract a plastic bag from a teenager's mouth. Thinking their force seemed excessive for a drug arrest, Glik pulled out his cellphone and began recording...Within minutes...he was in handcuffs.

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By Gary Younge - Sunday 3 January 2010

In...a state of perpetual crisis both terrorists and reactionaries thrive. Terrorists successfully create a climate of fear; governments successfully exploit that fear to extend their own powers.

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By Bill Tieleman - 12 January 2010

"This program saved my life. If it's shutdown, I'm going to go downhill fast."

-- Lawrence Bibby, Chimo Achievement Centre client

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Friday, January 08, 2010 - Al Jazeera

Riots involving hundreds of immigrants have broken out in southern Italy, in protest against an attack on African farm workers by a gang of local youths...The rioters, shouting "we are not animals" and holding signs accusing Italians of racism, clashed with riot police, leading to seven arrests.

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By Haroon Siddiqui - January 10, 2010

As critics have noted, the 51-page [citizenship] guide...has a decidedly Tory tilt...It shills for the Canadian Forces...as well as the Coast Guard, police and fire departments. But it offers not a word on other careers that may be just as crucial to Canada...The guide...is silent on gay marriage and has the briefest of references to the environment...Far more telling, however, is the section on gender equity.

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America's economic health is dire and worsening

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By Jane Kirby - Briarpatch Magazine

Ever since tens of thousands of people converged on the streets of Seattle and successfully shut down the World Trade Organization in November 1999, convergences have been the tactic of choice for confronting global capitalism. It is no surprise, then, that those who see the upcoming Olympics in Vancouver as one more attempt by state and corporate elites to expand their own interests at the expense of the general population have called for a convergence from February 10 to 15, 2010.

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By Alan Hart - December 27, 2009

On the first anniversary of the beginning of Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip...it’s not enough to say that the governments of the Western powers...are complicit in Israel’s on-going collective punishment of 1.5 million Palestinians...What is actually happening...is the continuation by stealth of Zionism’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine...What we are witnessing is...“genocide in slow motion.” And that...is what the governments of the Western powers...are complicit in.

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By Pina Belperio - January 4, 2010

...[I]t now appears that the Canadian government may need to step in to save the 2010 Winter Olympic Games...The Owe-lympics are predicted to cost Canadian taxpayers over $6 billion already. It will be interesting to see what the "real" economic benefits will be from the games.

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by Jeremy Scahill

German prosecutors have launched a preliminary investigation into allegations that the CIA deployed a team of Blackwater operatives on a clandestine operation in Hamburg, Germany, after 9/11 ultimately aimed at assassinating a German citizen with suspected ties to Al Qaeda.

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By Mark Weisbrot - January 09, 2010

...[A]s is generally the case when private media monopolies are challenged by progressive governments, the view presented by these powerful corporations and their allies in the United States is one-sided and over-simplified...[Democratic left governments are] facing the same challenge faced by all of the left-of-center governments in the region: the private media is dominated by heavily monopolized, often politically partisan, right-wing forces opposed to the progressive economic and social reforms that the electorate voted for.

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This article by James Ridgeway is featured at a brand new website focusing on the issue of solitary confinement in prisons. The Solitary Watch News site is part of an emerging project called Solitary Watch, an innovative public web site aimed at bringing this issue out of the shadows and into the light of the public square.

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By Seumas Milne - January 08, 2010

Decades of oil-hungry backing for despots...along with the failure of Arab nationalism to complete the decolonisation of the region, fuelled first the rise of Islamism and then the eruption of al-Qaida-style terror more than a decade ago. But, far from addressing the natural hostility to foreign control of the area and its resources at the centre of the conflict, the disastrous US-led response was to expand the western presence still further...

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By MARTHA ROSENBERG - January 5, 2010

It's no secret [anti-psychotic medications are] an institutional goldmine for the drug industry who exacted $5 million for one year of atypical drugs at Western State mental hospital in Tacoma, [Washington]. Many states have sued over the cost of atypical [anti-psychotics], especially the cost of treating the diabetes and metabolic disorders they cause, which has decimated Medicaid budgets.

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By Roger Annis - December 29, 2009

The pale green groups that honored [BC Premier] Gordon Campbell should be ashamed. His government should be condemned, not praised.

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Ziad Abbas is a journalist and co-director of the Ibdaa Cultural and Community Center in Dheisheh Refugee Camp, Palestine. Nadeen Elshorafa is a Palestinian activist with Youth Together in Oakland, California.

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By Ramón Alberto Garza - January 4, 2010

Everyone is aware that the political, economic, and social models that the country experimented with in the 20th century are worn out; they've expired. They no longer respond to current demands.

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Wednesday, January 06 2010 - Infoshop News

On the night of Wednesday, December 23, we crept out into the city armed with only paper and paste to make war on Olympic propaganda. We vandalized four bus shelter advertisements for Zellers/HBC Olympic fashion with our alternative message: RIOT 2010. “We were made for this”.

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By Eva Gollinger - January 06, 2010

A high-level [U.S. Agency for International Development] official confirmed two weeks ago that the CIA uses USAID's name to issue contracts and funding to third parties in order to provide cover for clandestine operations...Development Alternatives, Inc. is one of the largest U.S. government contractors in the world. The company...presently has a $50 million contract with USAID for operations in Afghanistan. In Latin America, [it] has operations and field offices in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Dominican Republic and Venezuela.

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***Please Forward Widely***

The 2010 Winter Olympics will take place in Vancouver & Whistler, on unceded Indigenous land, from February 12-28, 2010...We are organizing towards a global anti-capitalist and anti-colonial convergence against the 2010 Olympic Games...The basic plan thus far is...[See below for important information about the February Convergence!].

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Israeli defiance of international law.

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By Renato Magtubo - January 02, 2010

The global economic crisis and the slowdown in the local economy had a grave impact on the lives and livelihood of workers in the Philippines...Employers are passing the burden of the crisis on [to] the backs of the workers. Capitalists are using the global crisis as an excuse to demolish workers rights and undercut labor standards.

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Torture as official Israeli policy.

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From Riseup - 26 December 2009

Two Riseup [women] recently did a presentation at the People's Summit celebrating the 10 year anniversary of the Seattle WTO protests. We discussed the dangers of using corporate tools to do organizing work, in particular, the fact that you don't know what they do with your data. Thanks to some anonymous comments in a blogger's post about his research regarding a U.S. mobile phone company's release to law enforcement of its customers' geographic location information, we now have some answers.

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Convicted of murder in a deeply flawed trial, Herman Wallace has spent nearly 37 years in solitary confinement. Will new evidence finally lead to his release?

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By DAVE LINDORFF - January 4, 2010

...[T]he apparent mass murder of Afghan school children, including one as young as 11 years old, by a US-led group of troops, was pretty much blacked out in the American media. Especially blacked out was word from UN investigators that the students had not just been killed but executed, many of them after having first been rousted from their bedroom and handcuffed.

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By Uri Avnery - January 04, 2010

As an Israeli, I protest against the Israeli blockade. If I were an Egyptian, I would protest against the Egyptian blockade. As a citizen of this planet, I protest against both.

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By Am Johal - January 04, 2010

There are now over 200,000 homeless Canadians from coast to coast to coast. There are somewhere between 10,500 and 15,000 homeless people in [British Columbia]. 1.7 million Canadian households are in core housing need, representing over 4 million Canadians. And things are getting worse...Canadian housing policy is a health and human rights disaster. A homeless person dies every 12 days in BC.

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By Cnaan Liphshiz - 18/06/2009

Israel will be a major part of Geert Wilders' next film on Islam, the rightist Dutch legislator said last week in an interview for Haaretz. He praised Avigdor Lieberman, observing "similarities" between Yisrael Beiteinu and the Party for Freedom - a small movement which has grown to become Holland's second most popular.

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